


The Vine

by gogollescent



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:04:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sour,” he said, with the bored expertise of a twentieth-century wine critic—this before either of them was introduced to the concept of years. “And they’ll never be ripe.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vine

It was fall in the forest and everywhere Ysengrin saw fall’s desolation: in the crowns of the trees and the leaves underfoot, and all the lands Renard no longer roamed. He had been Ysengrin’s cousin and once or twice his enemy. “Oh, Ysengrin,” said Coyote, “I always knew you cared.” Coyote loved autumn for its flattering color scheme and cheap ornaments, and he went around with a gilded pinecone over his ear as Surma had done with her daisies, before summer was gone. The navy streak beneath his eye glowed like a blue excerpt of the evening sky, and his pupil rolled perpetually to admire his own head. “So very sad, to lose one of our kin.”

"It’s intolerable," Ysengrin said. "That they should take him so easily. He went and we did nothing."

"But what could we do?" said Coyote, drawing out the last sound. "—oohhhh," he sighed, mouth rounding like a well, and then something larger and capable of more endless darkness: a tunnel through the earth. "There are rules! True, I made most of them. But now I must abide by them, like all things beneath me." He ran a paw up Ysengrin’s hackles, his smile crushing. Said: "How I begged him not to go."

Ysengrin thought of Renard, who before Coyote came used to lead Ysengrin on endless chases through the wood, and trapped Ysengrin in any number of wells and firepits, houses and holes. He had been beaten by how many farmers, because of Renard; he had killed how many lambs. Not that the fox had such a taste for meat—Ysengrin still remembered an occasion on which he had found Renard leaping at the base of a trellis, his muzzle raised in hope, his golden eyes good coin, and above nothing fleshier than a dangling bunch of grapes. The light-shot green of sea glass in a bowl, and the smell of them, drifting down on some mischievous zephyr: even Ysengrin, terror of the herds, could admit they were sweet. But not Renard, when at last he fell back on all fours, his tongue slopping out of his mouth like the waves of flowers that drowned the northern hills. “Sour,” he said, with the bored expertise of a twentieth-century wine critic—this before either of them had been introduced to the concept of years. “And they’ll never be ripe.”

Renard was no patron of pursuit. He could run forever, though he would rather lay a wicked snare; but set him on the quarry’s track and what he knew was failing gracefully. Except, it seemed, where Surma was concerned.  _How I begged him not to go._

"Eventually he will return to us," Coyote said. He put both paws over Ysengrin’s eyes, so that all Ysengrin could see was the pitch of his heels; though he still smelled the decomposing world, and its effulgence seemed a thing not damped by void or shadow. That exuberant reek, death’s last sally into day: no tarry hand could dim it, nor one scent's absence make its tang less sharp.

“ _When_?” said Ysengrin, thinking of those grapes, long since eaten or rotted; and Coyote rested his chin on the top of Ysengrin's skull, until Ysengrin felt Coyote’s tears rain down hot on his ruff, and each one roll over his thick fur to make a fine black fruiting at his feet.


End file.
